On June 16, 2025, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a motion in the Anderson County District Court request­ing a new exe­cu­tion date for Robert Roberson, despite the fact that a motion from defense coun­sel with new evi­dence in sup­port of Mr. Roberson’s actu­al inno­cence remains pend­ing. As the Dallas Morning Editorial Board notes, it is ​“unusu­al” that “[AG] Paxton’s office is involved” in request­ing the exe­cu­tion date. AG Paxton has active­ly sought Mr. Roberson’s exe­cu­tion and has pub­licly dis­put­ed his claims of inno­cence; his office recent­ly took over Mr. Roberson’s case from the district attorney.

Mr. Roberson was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 2003 for caus­ing the death of his daugh­ter Nikki, who med­ical experts have since deter­mined died from severe viral and bac­te­r­i­al pneu­mo­nia that doc­tors failed to diag­nose, not from abuse or ​“Shaken Baby Syndrome” (SBS) as tri­al pros­e­cu­tors alleged. A day after AG Paxton’s motion was filed, coun­sel for Mr. Roberson filed an objec­tion, point­ing out that the law allows the ​“dis­trict court the dis­cre­tion not (empha­sis in orig­i­nal) to set an exe­cu­tion date under the cir­cum­stances pre­sent­ed,” as Mr. Roberson’s pend­ing peti­tion remains in front of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA). According to attor­ney Gretchen Sween, Mr. Roberson is inno­cent, and ​“the AG’s unjus­ti­fied rush to seek an exe­cu­tion date while that new evi­dence of inno­cence is before the court is outrageous.”

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